UNISON UNISO We Demand a Pay fra dar dans Nore DECEN (NUJ Left treasurer - personal capacity) THIS YEAR'S annual conference (ADM) of the National Union of Journalists (May 1315) takes place after another year of, at best, passive resistance to the onslaught of media management.
While the employers' offensive over union de-recognition and multi-skilling to cut jobs continues to make heavy inroads into rank-and-file confidence, the Acorn House bureaucrats have been more interested in spending their high-salaried time devising ways to smash the NUJ Left.
A 'business'-style streamlining of the lay national executive has handed more power to full-timers, who continue to make menacing threats to the union branch structure.
Infamously the union's fulltime staff have been raiding the strike fund to pay the union's day-to-day expenses, despite explicit instructions from last year's conference not to.
The NUJ has long had a policy on paper of opposing the anti-union laws, but the union's right wing/soft left leadership coalition has blocked any attempt to build support for a fightback based on concerted industrial action and the defiance of the union laws that flows from this.
Fighting Fund At this year's conference left activists will be at the forefront of a fight to safeguard the union's strike fund from further bureaucratic raids.
The left will also give support to journalists denying access to the media to fascists, but arguing for NUJ support for the recently-launched Media Workers against the Nazis 'no platform' initiative.
Socialist Outlook supporters will continue to argue for an open and democratic broad left to maximise the potential of rank-and-file opposition to the Acorn House bureaucrats.